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30 January 2014

Review: A February Bride by Besty St Amant

“Break their heart before they can break yours”

It’s been the motto of the Andrews women for three generations, so it makes perfect sense for Allie Andrews to abandon her fiancé, Marcus Hall, at the altar on their wedding day. But then she is asked to be maid of honour for Hannah, her best friend—and Marcus's sister. Continuing to avoid Marcus is going to be impossible, so what to do?

One of the key issues with a novella is not to clutter it with too much extraneous plot or too many unnecessary characters. February Bride kept the balance just right. It took a simple conflict: a woman who believes she’s going to fulfil the family curse of a string of failed marriages, and decides the best way to break the curse is not to marry at all.

She still loves Marcus—that, in her roundabout thinking, is why she shouldn’t marry him. And she comes to see that Marcus still loves her, even though she abandoned him at the worst possible time. She slowly comes to understand that as a Christian, her destiny is determined by God, not the ‘family curse’, and I think the way this was brought through without reverting to preachiness was one of the strengths of the story.

A February Bride is an excellent novella, and I’m certainly interested in reading more from Betsy St Amant. Recommended for romance lovers.

Thanks to Zondervan and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Betsy St Amant at her website.